Man City should revise their system of play in UCL

Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini was in total distress as he watched his team lose to Spanish giants Barcelona in the Uefa Champions League quarter-final first leg encounter at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester. Going into the game, many pundits expected Manchester City to stage a tough competition against the four-time winners of the competition Barcelona, one of most successful clubs in Europe. The match turned to be the opposite as the Spanish champions proved their superiority in ball possession. In modern football, when you lose possession, you virtually lose the game and Manchester City was made to defend deeply throughout the game even before they lost one man to a red card. Before defender Martin Demichelis was sent-off, Barcelona strikers were always knocking at the citizen’s defense and goalkeeper Joe Hart was forced to make a couple of smart saves from close range shots. Actually Man City, a team that is one of favourites to win the English Premier League and had lost just once at the Etihad Stadium this season (0-1 against Chelsea in the league), were beaten technically and tactically. One of the ways to beat Barcelona is to deny them possession and obstruct or minimize ball supply to Lionel Messi. This tactic has worked well as seen in last year’s Champions League against Bayern Munich, who demolished Catalans 7-0 on aggregate. I do not think Manchester City lack players to do the same Job but it’s a system that is built with time and with players playing together consistently. The situation is different from the Premier League where physical aspect of the game works better for Manchester City to win games. In the Champions League, its tactical and technical, which means when you chase the ball you lose, and based on what we have seen ball possession and precision in front of the goal is the best criteria to win games. The likes of Yaya Toure, Fernandinho, David Silva and Negredo are technically very good players, who can fit into any system of play. But the coach just opts for the physical aspect of the game against a team of Barcelona’s caliber as if he is playing against Norwich City! I do not expect Pellegrini to rely on the pace of Jesus Navas as a secret to beat opponents in the Champions League. Navas lost possession of the ball on several occasions and was made to chase the ball like a headless chicken. The sports world today reminds me of the complex mathematical equations that we normally encounter in our daily lives. Every type of work has ethics and code of conduct that governs or explains its mechanism of action. Football is one of those activities whose work ethic is entirely based on application of mathematics. When you take a full analysis of how successful football managers plan and execute their daily duties, you realise how hard football management can be. Coaches deploy calculative means to win games. All clubs involved in the European Champion League are top professional clubs that sign top class players from every corner of the world. Sometimes the quality of players can influence the outcome of matches, which is why bigger clubs with the best players tend to be more successful, but the most important ingredient to winning is the coach. When you look at top managers like Sir Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho among many others spend a lot of time planning and setting up a winning team. Football management, especially at the top level is not an easy job. Perhaps you can correlate this kind of life with complex algebra equations where you have the answer and really have to prove that the answer is either correct or wrong. The multi-billion dollar Arab investment in Manchester City has proved to be difficult as the club has failed to earn success in most lucrative competition in Europe. There is no doubt that winning the Champions League brings in more revenues than other competitions. The Champions League trophy is always a top priority for all major European clubs for both prestige and money. Manchester City have been eliminated in preliminary rounds of previous two seasons, and it appears as though their dreams of progressing past the quarter-finals are all but over unless they pull off a big upset at Nou Camp in the second leg.